Parenting with Trauma Experience

#Parenting #ParentingWithTraumaHistory #Life #LifeLemonade

This is for all parents who lived through difficult childhoods. This is for all of us who had to do whatever we needed to do to survive and now we are out on the other side of the trauma, in a safe(r) life. We made it here and now, with a lot of will, effort and, maybe, with a bit of luck. And as parents, we are working hard to raise our kids, in a way that they don’t have to experience the same life as ours.

As a therapist, as a friend, and in my own experience, I saw how hard it was for myself, for my clients, for my friends, to raise our children in a healthy / happy life, a life they we did not get as children.

We grew up in a life with traumatic events, and we managed to get away from that life and come to this new life. A life of safety where our children are now growing up.

So we raise our children to get what we didn’t have: safety, attention, patience and care, help with their homework and playdates with their friends or colleagues. Basically, things related to freedom of being a child. But as survivor parents, we are challenged by our present and our pasts simultaneously.

One of the most disturbing things for parents who have lived through trauma can be this: the childhood of their kids isn’t smooth and easy, even if their life is a good one. Their kids cry, struggle, they worry, they get sad over small things. And for parents who lived through trauma, this comes as a surprise: because they didn’t imagine their kids having a hard time if there were not bad things happening to them. And bad things don’t happen to their kids because they take care of that, of their kids having a different and easier, and safer life.

If your kid lives in this world, what’s difficult is that they don’t really understand your world, the world you grew up in. And this can be incredibly frustrating sometimes, and lonely. And can make you, as a parent, feel incredibly torn apart. On one hand, all you want for your kid is to never go through the tough things you went through, for them to get what you didn’t get and have the opportunities you didn’t have. Of course. On the other hand, you worry that they don’t appreciate what they have, and that they won’t get the strengths you have that saved your life. Right? These are two very different perspectives and it’s so hard and takes so much strength not to go from one extreme to another, not to be frustrated, afraid, and pour your frustration on your kid!

We don’t understand our kids when we see them getting to struggle over “nothing”, while they have so much we didn’t have. We really don’t understand them. We want to tell them about our life and how difficult it was for us when we were children.

And sometimes I do want to tell my daughter about my life. But even when I start to tell her some things about it, I have the feeling that she doesn’t understand me. And this makes me feel lonely.

And what I tell myself in these moments, and I would tell to all parents who lived through trauma, is this: if all goes well with what I want to do for and with my daughter, my daughter will never completely understand me. She will love me and she will learn from me, but my life experience will always be unknown to her. Maybe when she will be an adult, she might be able to understand part of it, she will understand me a bit better, but she will never understand what I have really lived through because she will never have to live through what I have lived. And THAT is a good thing that I am grateful for! Maybe she will take things for granted, things I never had, or I had them very late in life, or I have worked really hard for them and cherished them a lot. She may not see the value of how and what I do for her, because what I do for her is a part of her “usual” life. And THIS is as it should be! It means I am doing it right, even if sometimes I may feel frustrated or lonely.

This is one of the best things that I can do, to protect her, to give her what she needs, to remember that my daughter needs different things and different parenting than what I needed. Otherwise, it is very tempting, when I have had a difficult childhood, to want to give her the childhood I didn’t have. Yet the most important thing I can do is to give my daughter what she needs.

And what I can do for me as a parent is to continue to work on my healing, my emotions, my triggers, and have compassion for myself as a parent, so I can be there for the growth of my daughter.

Dear parent, you may feel alone, but you are not alone. I am here too.